[digester] XML rules, set-properties-rule, and ignoring missing properties

[paul anderson <pa...@yahoo.com>]

The javadoc on SetPropertiesRule:
>>isIgnoreMissingProperty()>>            Are attributes found in the xml without matching properties to be ignored?


 implies that one should be able to write a rule such as

***<set-properties-rule ignoreMissingProperty="true"/>***

or
***<set-properties-rule ignoreMissingProperties="true"/>***


but obviously these don't work.

Surely it's a common use-case to want to digest arbitrarily complex XML without needing to specify one by one every attribute you don't care about? 

Requiring a user to catalog an exhaustive set of attributes all over their digester rules creates an extraordinary burden and would also clutter the rules as to make them near unreadable.

Unless memory fails me, Digester used to silently ignore missing properties, so it seems we've lost something since then. Seems that either of the options marked *** would be a better solution than having scores of ignore-elements all over the place:

    <set-properties-rule>
      <ignore attr-name="Id"/>
      <ignore attr-name="Address"/>
      <ignore attr-name="email"/>
      <ignore attr-name="favoriteBreakfast"/>
      <ignore attr-name="likesApples"/>
      <ignore attr-name="likesPeaches"/>
    </set-properties-rule>


What is more, when the XML schema is extended to add attributes (common occurrence) this pattern of "fail unless explicitly ignored" causes a maintenance nightmare.

Re: [digester] XML rules, set-properties-rule, and ignoring missing properties

[Simone Tripodi <si...@apache.org>]

Hi Paul,

thanks a lot for reporting, very appreciated. Can you fill a JIRA issue for
that?

As a Digester best practice, I suggest you to not go through the XML rules
definition but, if you need a more compact way to express rules, refer to
rules binder, which is pretty faster than mapping the XML document to rules.

HTH, best,
-Simo

[1] http://commons.apache.org/proper/commons-digester/guide/binder.html

http://people.apache.org/~simonetripodi/
http://twitter.com/simonetripodi


On Fri, Feb 28, 2014 at 5:57 PM, paul anderson <pa...@yahoo.com>wrote:

> The javadoc on SetPropertiesRule:
> >>isIgnoreMissingProperty()>>            Are attributes found in the xml
> without matching properties to be ignored?
>
>
>  implies that one should be able to write a rule such as
>
> ***<set-properties-rule ignoreMissingProperty="true"/>***
>
> or
> ***<set-properties-rule ignoreMissingProperties="true"/>***
>
>
> but obviously these don't work.
>
> Surely it's a common use-case to want to digest arbitrarily complex XML
> without needing to specify one by one every attribute you don't care about?
>
> Requiring a user to catalog an exhaustive set of attributes all over their
> digester rules creates an extraordinary burden and would also clutter the
> rules as to make them near unreadable.
>
> Unless memory fails me, Digester used to silently ignore missing
> properties, so it seems we've lost something since then. Seems that either
> of the options marked *** would be a better solution than having scores of
> ignore-elements all over the place:
>
>     <set-properties-rule>
>       <ignore attr-name="Id"/>
>       <ignore attr-name="Address"/>
>       <ignore attr-name="email"/>
>       <ignore attr-name="favoriteBreakfast"/>
>       <ignore attr-name="likesApples"/>
>       <ignore attr-name="likesPeaches"/>
>     </set-properties-rule>
>
>
> What is more, when the XML schema is extended to add attributes (common
> occurrence) this pattern of "fail unless explicitly ignored" causes a
> maintenance nightmare.